Frequently Asked Questions

If you wish to know more about Automatic Translation, or about the processes of Kataku, or how to get the best out of Kataku, please see Kataku Help

What is ToggleText and what is its relationship to Kataku?

ToggleText is an Australia-based company focusing on the development and delivery of automatic machine translation solutions for the Asia-Pacific region.

Our flagship product family automatically translates Indonesian <> English and is generically referred to as Kataku. The term Kataku is also sometimes used to refer to the Kataku Translation Engine which is at the heart of each Kataku product.

Why would I use Kataku instead of a human translator?

Our clients have three major concerns; time, cost and convenience. Kataku has the capacity to instantly translate large volumes of text, and at lower cost than a human translator. Kataku is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so you are able to access it at any time without the inconvenience or overhead of enlisting the services of human translators.

However, if you require a quality-assured accurate translation, for example in a legal or safety-critical situation, you should use the services of a qualified human translator.

Is there a version of Kataku that I can install on my PC?

Currently, ToggleText does not offer Kataku as a standalone consumer product installable on a PC.

If you have any specific requirements, please contact us and we will be happy to assist you.

How do I purchase a ToggleText product?

To buy one of the Kataku translation products simply send an e-mail from the contact us page, and a staff member will be happy to assist you.

How long does it take Kataku to do a translation?

The brief answer is that a request of under 300 words typically takes a few seconds. The actual processing time on the translation server is a small fraction of a second; processing thousands of words per minute. If you are experiencing a longer delay, it is likely that our free trial server is under a momentary heavy load, so please wait a few minutes and try again. Delays of more than a few seconds are particularly likely to happen in the early and late hours of the Indonesian working day.

To answer the question in more detail one needs to consider a number of factors such as the size of the translation request in numbers of words, the length of sentences and complexity of the language being used, transmission delays between your browser and ToggleText’s translation engine, the number of simultaneous requests and the particular hardware being used to host the translation engine at the time.

Can ToggleText staff do a large translation for me?

If you don’t have the resources to use one of our products yourself, ToggleText will translate your electronic document(s) for you upon request.

See our Products & Services section of this website, or go to Translation Assistance Service.

The translation box on the home page does not appear to be working. Is there are problem with the site?

The translation tool is rarely not working. However bursts of translation requests can cause brief periods of congestion. In such situations retry your translation request in a few minutes. Internet networking problems can also cause connectivity issues and/or excessive delays in sending and receiving information. These can appear as errors reported by your browser. Unfortunately, such networking problems are not controllable by ToggleText. However, these are generally transient in nature and submitting your translation request again in a few minutes usually provides the expected response.

What does the SMS/Email checkbox on the translation box actually do?

The words, expressions and grammar used in normal written communication are different to the informal language used in SMS and email communication. In order to accurately translate such messages Kataku needs to use a dictionary and grammar optimised for this form of communication. By ticking the checkbox, you can tell Kataku to expect such nonstandard language.

It is best *not* to turn this option on if you are translating standard text in either English or Indonesian.

The translations generated by Kataku systematically appear inaccurate. Do you want to know about this?

When considering the accuracy of automated translation systems one should remember that no automated system is “perfect”, nor are such systems intended to replace human translators. Kataku has been in commercial use for over 5 years, and services millions of translation requests per month via the free trial translation widget on the Company’s web site alone. The translation engine is extremely robust, stable and reasonably accurate, and it is subject to continual improvement.

If, however, you notice systemic issues with the translations we would like to know about these. The nature of the translation engine is complex and what may appear as a simple issue may involve quite some analysis, design and testing, before being incorporated into a new release. Hence it is best not expect to see reported problems fixed in the short term.

When reporting a translation language issue please include copies of the original and translated texts, as well as a detailed description of the problem as you see it. While we may not reply directly to every such e-mail we will examine them in due course.

How can I translate Word documents and PDFs using Kataku?

Kataku products natively operate on text, text files and web pages. To translate Microsoft Word documents you will need to save your document as a text file (.txt extension in Microsoft Office), then use Kataku to translate the saved text file.

Similarly, in order to translate a PDF document you will need to use one of the many available PDF to text file document converters to generate a text file. You can then use Kataku to translate the resulting text file.

It is best not to 'cut & paste' a sentence or paragraph from a Word (or other formatted document) into the translation box. Instead, save the file in text format first, then 'cut & paste' from the text file.